Senior Autonomy Technical Release Manager

Maymobility; Ann Arbor (MI); On-site; USD 152,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive healthcare

Retirement benefits

Parental leave

Flexible vacation

Wellness program

Job summary

May Mobility is transforming mobility in Ann Arbor and beyond. We are seeking a Senior Autonomy Technical Release Manager to coordinate software releases across engineering, validation, safety, DevOps, and deployment teams, and to lead post-release incident response.

You will own release readiness, manage post-release incidents, and drive improvements in the release process while coordinating with multiple stakeholders across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of technical project management experience including team management, project planning, status updating, and risk management.
• 2+ years of experience as an engineer or in a highly technical area.
• High initiative and proactive problem solving.
• Ability to clarify fuzzy requirements and document challenges for the team to solve.
• Excellent communication with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Understanding of software and hardware development life cycles, integration processes, and validation complexity.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end release coordination and autonomy engineering release management, tracking deliverables across cross-functional teams and ensuring alignment with the release plan, timeline, and quality bar.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration among autonomy, engineering, test and validation, safety, DevOps, product, customer operations, finance, and strategy stakeholders; produce project artifacts like SOWs and Gantt charts.
• Drive production incident management, ensure teams are engaged, impact is communicated, and remediation is tracked to resolution.
• Own hotfix and commercial fix release lanes, directing urgent mitigation for production issues in a controlled manner.
• Establish closed-loop improvements by feeding incident learnings into future release planning and validation coverage.
• Build and maintain relationships with partners and internal stakeholders to align with product vision and release objectives.

Skills

Project management

Cross‑functional coordination

Communication

Systems thinking

Initiative

Requirements clarification

Technical storytelling

Software/hardware lifecycle

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Gantt charts

Job description

May Mobility is transforming cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May develops and deploys autonomous vehicles (AVs) powered by our innovative Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology that literally reimagines the way AVs think.

Our vehicles do more than just drive themselves - they provide value to communities, bridge public transit gaps and move people where they need to go safely, easily and with a lot more fun. We’re building the world’s best autonomy system to reimagine transit by minimizing congestion, expanding access and encouraging better land use in order to foster more green, vibrant and livable spaces.

Since our founding in 2017, we’ve given more than 500,000 autonomous rides to real people around the globe. And we’re just getting started. We’re hiring people who share our passion for building the future, today, solving real-world problems and seeing the impact of their work. Join us.

Job Summary

The Senior Autonomy Technical Release Manager is responsible for driving the coordination and execution of software releases across cross‑functional engineering, validation, safety, DevOps, and deployment teams, and for leading post‑release incident response. This role serves as the central point of accountability for release readiness — ensuring that deliverables stay aligned on scope, timing, and readiness — and for production issues, ensuring they are driven to containment and resolution with clear ownership and follow‑through, and translated into durable improvements in the release process. The role focuses primarily on non‑core autonomy deliverables and cross‑functional coordination, with direct ownership of post‑release incident tracking through containment and resolution.

Essential Responsibilities

• Lead end-to‑end release coordination and autonomy engineering release management, tracking deliverables across cross‑functional teams and ensuring alignment with the release plan, timeline, and quality bar. Build the tools and processes needed to identify risks and coordinate on‑time, high‑quality product delivery, and provide regular status updates on release, project, and program progress and risks.
• Facilitate cross‑functional collaboration among autonomy, engineering, test and validation, safety, DevOps, product, customer operations, finance, and strategy stakeholders, maintaining clear alignment on scope, dependencies, timing, and release readiness. Consolidate input from autonomy, engineering, safety, legal, and business teams to produce and distribute project work plans, Requests for Procurement, Statements of Work, Program Plans, and Gantt charts, leading the team with ownership of duties along with follow‑up and corrections as needed.
• Drive production incident management, ensuring the appropriate teams are engaged, impact is assessed and clearly communicated, and remediation actions are tracked through to resolution. Coordinate and communicate effectively between development and production teams throughout.
• Own the hotfix and commercial fix release lanes, directing urgent mitigation and corrective releases for production issues in a controlled and auditable manner. Proactively remove obstacles to drive momentum and progress, identify gaps in communication or schedule, and support teams balancing competing priorities to drive results.
• Establish and maintain a closed‑loop improvement process in which production incidents and root cause analysis outcomes inform future release planning, validation coverage, and process refinement. Understand technical implementation at the architectural level, propose alternatives when necessary, ask questions that clarify priorities, and identify opportunities for process efficiency.
• Build and maintain relationships with May Mobility's partners and internal stakeholders, understand their needs, and drive alignment with May Mobility's product vision and release objectives.

Skills and Abilities

Success in this role typically requires the following competencies:

• Proven ability to lead complex, multi‑team release programs end‑to‑end, including planning, risk identification, dependency management, and tracking deliverables to on‑time, high‑quality delivery across engineering, validation, safety, DevOps, and deployment functions.
• Strong incident and emergency‑response judgment, with demonstrated experience driving production incident management and hotfix/emergency release workflows — engaging the right stakeholders, communicating impact clearly, and tracking remediation through to resolution in a controlled, auditable manner.
• Excellent cross‑functional communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for both technical and non‑technical audiences, consolidate input from diverse stakeholders (autonomy, engineering, safety, legal, business), and produce clear program artifacts such as work plans, SOWs, and Gantt charts.
• Technical fluency at the architectural level, combined with a systems‑thinking mindset — able to ask the right clarifying questions, propose alternatives, identify process inefficiencies, and establish closed‑loop improvement processes that translate incident learnings into stronger future releases.

Qualifications and Experience

Candidates most successful in this role typically hold the following qualifications or comparable knowledge or experience:

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. Engineering, Computer Science or another highly technical degree preferred
• A minimum of 2+ years of prior experience as an engineer or other highly technical area.
• A minimum of 5+ years of technical project management experience including team management, project planning, status updating, and risk management. Ideally this experience is at least partially in fast paced research and development projects.
• A high level of initiative and activation. Must be able to enthusiastically take on challenges, including those peripheral to core responsibilities when needed for project success.
• Ability to clarify and document fuzzy requirements and challenges such that a project team can efficiently and effectively solve problems.
• An ability to clearly and concisely communicate technical concepts including root cause analysis, technical challenges and their solutions, and results backed by data.
• An ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non‑technical people and teams.
• Understanding of software and hardware development life cycles, integration processes, and test/validation complexity

Physical Requirements

• Standard office working conditions which includes but not limited to:
  • Prolonged sitting
  • Prolonged standing
  • Prolonged computer use
• Travel Required? Minimal: 1%-10%

Benefits and Perks

• Comprehensive healthcare suite including medical, dental, vision, life, and disability plans. Domestic partners who have been residing together at least one year are also eligible to participate.
• Health Savings and Flexible Spending Healthcare and Dependent Care Accounts available.
• Rich retirement benefits, including an immediately vested employer safe harbor match.
• Generous paid parental leave as well as a phased return to work.
• Flexible vacation policy in addition to paid company holidays.
• Total Wellness Program providing numerous resources for overall wellbeing

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and/or people of color are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every qualification.

At May Mobility, we’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workforce, so if you’re excited about this role but your previous experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway! You may be the perfect candidate for this or another role at May.

Want to learn more about our culture & benefits? Check out our website!

May Mobility is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants for employment will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetics or any other legally protected basis. Below, you have the opportunity to share your preferred gender pronouns, gender, ethnicity, and veteran status with May Mobility to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring and recruitment processes. Completion of these questions is entirely voluntary. Any information you choose to provide will be kept confidential, and will not impact the hiring decision in any way. If you believe that you will need any type of accommodation, please let us know.

Salary Range

$152,000 — $170,000 USD

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